


Gentle.

by Pascalle



Category: Produce 101 (TV)
Genre: Hair Braiding, Hair Brushing, M/M, i rly love jang moonbok ok, sleep talk
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-05
Updated: 2017-05-05
Packaged: 2018-10-28 06:33:18
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,284
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10825737
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Pascalle/pseuds/Pascalle
Summary: Moonbok was positive. He was always smiling, and was quick to make sure Hyunwoo would smile too.That sometimes made Hyunwoo forget that even Jang Moonbok can cry sometimes.





	Gentle.

**Author's Note:**

> nothing will ever beat my love of gunhee/moonbok
> 
> moonbok: *rides on hyunwoo's back during call me baby*
> 
> UH--

Hyunwoo wasn't exactly sure how long he was sitting there in silence, his mind still reeling from the switch in centers for their first group mission. He knew it had to be awhile though, as it had even gotten to the point where the cameraman standing there with him had finally decided enough was enough and went to go film something more interesting rather than one boy wallowing in his own self pity of having failed to produce the right aura Kahi wanted. 

He probably would have sat there in his corner longer, if he hadn’t felt a sharp tap on his knee that made him jump and hit his head on the wall he was leaning against. He groaned slightly, rubbing his head as he felt a hand grip his free arm.

A high but rather gentle voice suddenly filled his ears.“Come on, Hyunwoo. We can’t stay sad all day, we have work to do!” 

He looked up to see a cascade of black hair half obstructing his own vision, and realized that Moonbok was smiling down at him, still tugging at his arm but making no real progress of actually getting him up (even though he seemed to be using quite a bit of his strength).

He almost wanted to snap at Moonbok, and tell him he doesn’t understand how shitty he currently felt for losing his center position, but a second look at the shorter boy’s earnest face reminded him of the stuff he had gone through, no, is currently _going_ through. No one had been immune to seeing the stuff that people posted on websites, and he had seen the other trainees whispering behind their hands and pointing towards Moonbok. 

Hell, Hyunwoo wasn’t even sure how he could be standing there, smiling like nothing was wrong. Even the comments about Hyunwoo looking like a handsome Yang Hyunsuk hit him in ways that made him feel wholly uncomfortable with reading comments. 

A hand waved in front of his face, snapping him out of his thoughts. “Well? Get up, you know for a fact I won’t be lifting you up any time soon.” Moonbok grinned in silent laughter at the jab at his own strength.

He was always so content at laughing at himself, and for a moment, Hyunwoo felt the corners of his own mouth upturns lightly as he finally stood up and followed Moonbok to one of the many small practice rooms. It seems that Moonbok had already been there previously to set up camp, because there were already a couple of pens and notebooks scattered on the floor. There were even lyrics already written, and Hyunwoo’s eyes widened slightly.

“How long was I sitting in the corner?” 

Moonbok laughed, shaking his head. “No, no. You weren’t there for _that_ long. I was just thinking of lyrics almost as soon as we got our songs picked. I just hadn’t had the time to show you because we were too busy getting the basics of the dance down.” The shorter boy actually looked a bit nervous saying that, carefully twirling a strand of his hair in between his fingers as he said it.

“No, no. It’s fine. I’m impressed.” 

They both sat down, looking over the lyrics and creating adjustments, rewriting, and even already planning out ways to shake up the dance for Call Me Baby to incorporate their newly made raps. And despite all ill feelings he had had earlier, they had all somehow been wiped away as he sat on the floor with Moonbok, scribbling away in their notebooks as they perfected everything.

“Are you sure this will work? It seems kind of weird just sort of...mocking ourselves.” Hyunwoo wondered, looking down at their lyrics. 

Moonbok didn’t look up from his notebook. “Sometimes the easiest way to get over what’s hurting you is laughing at it…”

Hyunwoo noted how Moonbok trailed off in that moment, and looked up just in time to see what looked like flash of a melancholic look in Moonbok’s eyes before the long-haired boy looked up and smiled at him.

“They won’t get their satisfaction at laughing at us if we laugh at ourselves first, right?”

Hyunwoo couldn’t help it. He smiled back at Moonbok. Maybe he was right, of course he had to be right. He had way more experience with this than he did. 

“Right.”

At some point, Hyunwoo had stopped paying attention to the notebooks and was taken to just staring at Moonbok’s...flailing movements. He seemed to really love expressing himself by moving his hands, every syllable punctuated with punches to the air in front of him, and even now, when he finally wasn’t moving about, his hands were still occupied. And at some point Moonbok seemed to have produced a hair band out of nowhere and had begun french braiding his own hair. 

He was kind of impressed, he couldn’t understand how the hell people with long hair could do it, let alone without a mirror. But soon enough Moonbok finished his braid, and continued on with his rambles about their rap.

“--And then with the E-X-O we could go _bang, bang, bang_ with something else, y’know?” 

“Yeah, definitely.” Hyunwoo nodded, pretending like he hadn’t totally zoned out in that moment.

Moonbok tilted his head slightly, clearly noticing his late reaction before he checked his phone for the time. “Oh, shit. We’ve been here for way too long. We should probably head back to the dorm.”

Hyunwoo checked his own phone, eyes widening. Oh, he hadn’t realized it was so late. Obviously there was no real curfew for them to speak of, but most people would rather other trainees not walking in at 2 am when most of them were already asleep. So it was better for them to leave now before that happened.

They both quickly packed up their things, and took the short walk back to the dorms. There were only a couple of other stragglers at this time, some of them looking frazzled, others were drenched in sweat from dance practice, but all of them clearly tired and ready to shower and go to bed. 

When they arrived at their room, sure enough their other group members had long since gone to bed. Hyunwoo threw his things up onto his bunk, intending to go shower before going to bed. He looked over at Moonbok, who was already sitting on his bed. 

“I’m going to shower, are you gonna come with?”

Moonbok’s head snapped up, almost too quickly that his hair flew up almost comically. He shook his head. “No, I’m good.” 

Hyunwoo shrugged, wondering what had made Moonbok jump like that. Maybe he was just tired and close to falling asleep and he had just scared him. Either way, he showered quickly and returned to the dorm, stepping lightly under the assumption that Moonbok would have fallen asleep by then. But he was incorrect on that point, because when he walked into the darkened room he still saw the silhouette of Moonbok still sitting up on his bunk, almost quivering ever so slightly.

After a combination of the light spilling in from the hallway and his eyes adjusting to the dimness of the room, he realized that Moonbok’s hair was a mess. The braid was half out, and Moonbok’s hair was standing on end like he had aggressively tried to undo the braid, and his shoulders were shaking slightly as Hyunwoo heard half of a choked sob bubble up from Moonbok’s throat.

“Moonbokkie?” Hyunwoo asked, in a whisper.

“H-Hyunwoo?” Moonbok seemed to panic as he quickly scrubbed his eyes hard with the sleeves of his shirt, trying to hide what Hyunwoo already saw.

“Are you okay?” Hyunwoo sat down as quietly as he could on Moonbok’s bed, nervously looking at the occupied bunks hoping they hadn’t woken anyone up.

Moonbok nodded, but he was still almost aggressively scrubbing at his eyes, leaving his skin red and irritated as he tried to remove his tears from his face. “It’s stupid. I’m fine….I’m just--” Moonbok paused. “I was just thinking too hard, about the comments and things. This just happens sometimes when I don’t mean for it to.”

That melancholy look he had seen on Moonbok when they were in the practice room hadn’t been his imagination then. His voice was still shaky as he tried to untangle the mess he had made of the braid. It was only a couple of hours earlier that he had finished his neat clean braid, smiling proudly to himself as his fingers ran over his work to make sure everything was even. And now it was….well, it was a hot mess. 

“Is there anything else?” Hyunwoo asked, it really looked like there was something else on Moonbok’s mind.

“Okcheol called me right after you left, he was asking me if I wanted ONO to sue the people leaving hate comments and I...I just don’t know. I don’t know if I should. I know I don’t want to but...the way he sounded on the phone, it was such a serious voice. I feel like maybe I should be reacting more harshly to this than I am.”

Hyunwoo was quiet. He wasn’t quite sure what to say in this situation. Of course, had it been anyone else he would have immediately suggested suing, but there was something about Moonbok. He couldn’t pinpoint what it was, but Moonbok was almost...Too good in a sense. Too good for his _own_ good. He couldn’t imagine anyone seeing the death threats and disgusting comments and still hesitate to sue. 

“Well, in the end it’s up to you.” And without thinking, he leaned forward and placed his hand underneath Moonbok’s chin, tilting his face up.

His face was still streaked red and irritated, random strands of his long black hair hung in his face and his eyes were puffy from tears. He felt like he should say something more. Anything. Moonbok was supposed to be happy, he was the vitamin of their little group. He had them all laughing within seconds of their group forming, and Hyunwoo couldn’t stand seeing him so sad.

“Do you want me to brush your hair?” 

Moonbok looked at him, slightly confused. “...What?”

“Your hair. It’s a mess.” 

Moonbok snorted, and the corners of his mouth were turned upward for the briefest moment. “Yeah….sure. Just be gentle okay? My hair isn’t _that_ thick that I can afford that many strands being pulled out.”

Moonbok crawled over to the dresser by his bunk and pulled out a brush, handing it over, and positioning himself with his back turned to him. 

Hyunwoo tried to be as gentle and as quiet as he could (he was impressed that no one had woken up, really.) and he detangled the remnants of Moonbok’s braid before he finally began carefully running the brush through Moonbok’s hair. Even though he had only had the braid for a couple of hours at best, his hair had actually curled slightly. Hyunwoo couldn’t help but also run his fingers through the soft black strands, and as he did he could feel Moonbok becoming less and less tense, relaxing back towards Hyunwoo. 

Moonbok’s hair at this point, was successfully tangle free. But they both sat there on Moonbok’s bed in silence, the only sound filling the room was the soft, even breathing coming from their sleeping teammates. Moonbok began leaning even more back, ever so slightly until his head connected with Hyunwoo’s shoulder. And Hyunwoo, without thinking, leaned forward and loosely rested his hands on Moonbok’s hips. 

“...Thanks.” Moonbok whispered, so softly that Hyunwoo almost missed it.

Hyunwoo responded by resting his head on Moonbok’s and slightly tightening his grip on his hips. 

They stayed like that, quietly relishing in each other’s warmth. It was comforting in a way. He knew that Moonbok realized how much it hurt losing that center position, how horrible it felt when he got bad comments online. That day he had tried so hard to make him smile, and Hyunwoo realized that Moonbok wasn’t just a lucky charm of popularity on their team. He had his own problems too, and he wasn’t just sunshine and rainbows. And he felt strangely honored, that Moonbok had let him in on something so personal.

He heard Moonbok mumble something.

“Hmm?” He moved his head slightly to try and hear Moonbok. “Did you say something?”

“---you.” Was all he managed to make out.

“Moonbokkie?” He asked again.

Moonbok’s head lolled over to the side, and Hyunwoo had to try and suppress the grin on his face. The shorter male had fallen asleep, his mouth still listlessly trying to form half-coherent words. He remembered what Moonbok had said when they first moved into their dorm room. He sleep talked, but Hyunwoo hadn’t had the chance to witness it because he usually fell asleep before Moonbok. 

It was quite cute, really.

Though seeing Moonbok asleep made him realize that it was even later, and if he didn’t go to bed now he’d wake up even more tired for practice. And though for the briefest moment he considered just sleeping in Moonbok’s bed as well, he took one look at the size of it and relented to the fact that they wouldn’t fit anyways. He carefully moved Moonbok to rest on his pillow before walking across the room to climb up to his bunk.  
Before he went to sleep, he looked over to Moonbok’s bunk. He could see his mouth still mouthing quiet nonsense, and his arms were outstretched, reaching towards the warmth where Hyunwoo had been a minute ago. 

Maybe next time he’ll stay over on Moonbok’s bunk.

**Author's Note:**

> me every day i wake up in the morning: i love projecting my love for moonbok onto other trainees of produce 101


End file.
